Citing an ongoing shortage of nurses and concerns for patient safety, the unionized registered nurses of Allegheny General Hospital urged health care workers throughout the region to demand improvements to staffing levels. At a news conference Wednesday at Allegheny Commons Park North in Pittsburgh, the RNs represented by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania spoke ahead of contract negotiations. The 1,200 unionized AGH nurses are working under a contract negotiated in 2020. It expires Oct. 13.,2023 Meetings are expected to be held in the coming weeks. Over the next year, 4,200 union members at six hospitals that are part of the Allegheny Health Network, UPMC and Heritage Valley will be negotiating new contracts. AGH and Allegheny Valley Hospital in Harrison are part of the Allegheny Health Network. “In 2020, we negotiated a tremendous contract, and yet the past three years have been the most challenging of our careers,” said Katrina Rectenwald, union chapter president. She is an ICU nurse at AGH. “We’ve watched one experienced nurse after another leave. We’ve been short-staffed. We’ve picked up extra shifts and more shifts on top of that. We’ve trained traveling nurses to do our job for three times the pay. We’ve been assaulted and verbally abused by patients and visitors.”

Photo Credit: Asha Blake/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review